Imagine in the News

October 19, 2016:

Doodle Reviews of ShotPut Pro 6 for Macintosh

by Kevin McAuliffe

I have to say that when the task of reviewing software to offload camera media came across my desk, I had pretty much figured it would be a standard, uneventful review, but I really have to say that Shotput Pro 6 (SP6) really turned my opinion right around and quick.

If you work in a production company that does a lot of shooting, this handy little piece of software will get your footage exactly where it needs it to go once it has been brought back to the office, or wherever it’s going to be edited. It will verify the copy as well, so you can sleep easy knowing your footage has been checked via the Checksum feature, and is waiting for an editor to start cutting....

All this is very cool, but what really blew me away was the reports that were generated by Shotput Pro 6. You get a complete breakdown of all the shots that were transferred, thumbnails, and information about the clips including duration, codec and so much more. I have to say that I was truly blown away by the amount of depth you could have out of, what would seem to be, a very simple program.

In the end, Shotput Pro 6 is a fantastic little application, that if you do any card-based shooting, should be an absolute must have tool to move and verify your media. I’ll be honest, I could go on for hours about all the parameters you can set, and the detail you can go into for moving your footage, but you really should check it out for yourself.
READ MORE...

October 18, 2016:

A Film-Makers Review of ShotPut Pro 6 for Macintosh

Why aren't all camera operators doing this?

For some time now secure offloading software has been available. Whilst it's widely used by DITs and Data Wranglers, there is a slow but gradual uptake of use by camera operators, editors and videographers. I've personally been using ShotPut Pro 5 for the last year and … the knowledge that all the data is securely transferred to two separate locations and checksum verified, I can go home without worrying that I'm going to get a call in the morning from a client who's data corrupted on transfer.

So this is where ShotPut Pro 6 comes in. As the latest version of Imagine Product's DIT suite, it brings a couple of new feature's to the table. Namely improved licensing, faster speed, better ability for individual files and a rather cool PDF summary of each transfer. READ MORE...

September 29, 2016:

ABELCINE REVIEW: ShotPut Pro 6 for Macintosh

Imagine Products has released version 6 of their ShotPut Pro software. Those of us familiar with ShotPut know that it is one of the most important tools in modern digital imaging. ShotPut ensures that the content of media cards is safely offloaded to your destination drives. It upholds the first commandment of media offloading: Thou Shall NOT Drag And Drop.

In this blog I take you through the major updates of the program, including a selectable user interface. It is now possible to offload only selected clips – prior versions only let you offload the entire contents of a card. The offload process can now be paused and resumed. Another new feature of this version is that PDF reports are possible, complete with frame grabs.

September 22, 2016:

STUDIO DAILY REVIEW: ShotPut Pro 6 for Macintosh

By Barry Braverman

The Ubiquitous Offloading Tool Gets a Tune-up for Handling Very Large Camera Files and More

"Any way you wrangle it, SPP’s nifty new Pause & Resume feature is a major enhancement in version 6.

Pressed for time, DITs and data wranglers are often forced to interrupt the transfer of large data files. On many shows there are not enough hours in a day to permit uninterrupted offload of the huge, 4K-and-higher-resolution camera files. Exhausted data wranglers must work late into the night and may suffer miserably in a thankless job." READ MORE...

Imagine Products has received the 2016 Best of Indianapolis Award in the Media and Entertainment Software category by the Indianapolis Award Program.

Each year, the Indianapolis Award Program identifies companies that we believe have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These are local companies that enhance the positive image of small business through service to their customers and our community. These exceptional companies help make the Indianapolis area a great place to live, work and play.
READ MORE...

September 13, 2016:

Imagine Products Qualify for Top Shelf in New Zealand

Established in 1988, Top Shelf Productions is a leader in New Zealand television and film production. It has a long and successful history in television — particularly with documentaries and factual-based series which comprise more than 1500 hours of documentaries and multiple award-winning productions.

“When I first came to Top Shelf,” says Jack Mugford, Film and Television Editor, Top Shelf Productions, “the archive was scattered across drives and DigiBeta XDCAM tapes, and accessing the content was a time-consuming, stressful, tedious endeavor. My goal was to ensure that at the end of each production, we archived everything to LTO tape so that it would not only be safely backed up, but much easier to access.

“To make it happen, we turned to PreRoll Post, the LTFS archiving application from Imagine Products. Having used applications from Imagine Products before, I knew the company’s knack for amazing software that follows a logical thought process. In fact, we use Imagine Products software throughout our workflow, starting with the ShotPut Pro offloading application and ending with PreRoll Post. Simply put, choosing PreRoll Post was a no-brainer.” READ MORE...

ShotPut Pro 6 features an all new activation system for remote, web based management. The all new GUI has a color coded status/progress listing with user definable offload identifiers. You can now Pause and Resume offloads making it convenient to pick up and move on location. And offloads may be sequenced by the user for priority completions.

Naming Presets are more powerful than ever. Now you can color code them, sort them, import/export them between users and computers, and build complex combination naming schemes including sub-folder nesting.

There's also a new Direct to Destination mode that allows direct Drag and Drop between drives without creating new offload folders. Finder Tags are retained with your copies. And there is a Favorites list for convenience and organization.

Any attached drives (volumes) have information panels to show you their status and tasks. And offloads of course have similar Detailed information at your finger tips.

The new PDF offload report format offers Video Aware information such as extracted video file metadata and progressive thumbnails of the contents of clips.
READ MORE...

See ShotPut Pro 6 Live at New York City's MoPictive Users Group
September 27, 2016

See ShotPut Pro 6 Live at Connecticut's Digital Creators Users Group
September 28, 2016

See ShotPut Pro 6 Live at Chicago's Creative Pro Users Group
September 28, 2016

August 19, 2016:

Matthew Allard Reviews ShotPut Pro 6 for Macintosh

ShotPut Pro 6 for Mac – the industry standard copy and verification program gets a makeover. ShotPut Pro has been the de-facto standard copy and verification program used by major movie studios for years. While the program has always been bulletproof, times have changed, and the user interface was starting to look a bit long in the tooth. After receiving customer feedback, Imagine Products set about to completely redesign the user interface in their latest version – ShotPut Pro 6.
READ MORES...

January 28, 2016:

BLING DIGITAL: THE VALUE OF LTO ARCHIVING

To help meet that goal in terms of data archiving, Bling uses PreRoll Post from Imagine Products for all master media in its LTO archives. PreRoll Post automatically indexes camera originals — complete with thumbs, proxies and metadata — while backing up full-resolution media to local disk and long-term LTO tapes, a Sony Optical Disc Archive, or a local disk or server. PreRoll Post uses an LTFS system, which mounts a tape as a volume (hard disk) within OS X or Windows. This makes it possible to write and read from the tape as if it were a disk, without proprietary software or formatting. READ MORE @PostPerspective.com...

June 2-5, 2016:

CINE GEAR EXPO 2016 LOS ANGELES, CA

Roger Mabon with LTO-7 mTape Live from the CineGear show floor

AbelCine with Michelle Maddox Live from the CineGear show floor

April 21, 2016:

PBS Uses ShotPut Pro for 'Live at 9:30'

Washington’s D.C. renowned 9:30 Club is the subject of a new 56-minute PBS monthly offering of live music with interviews, short films and comedy. Production reports using "a MacBook Pro, G-Technology hard drives, and ShotPut Pro 5.0 to ingest about 20 cards full of media after each show, ranging from 700 GB to 1.2 TB per band." READ MORE @TVTechnology.com...

Fujifilm LTO-7 and PreRoll Post

BVE 2016 London

January 22, 2016:

David Hague Reviews PreRoll Post for Windows

AUSTRALIAN VIDEOCAMERA, David Hague writes: As many know, I am a huge fan of Doctor Who and have every episode since it started in 1963 burnt to DVD. Actually not quite as the BBC has lost a number of the early ones – the tapes have gone AWOL. From time to time one surfaces in some obscure place with no knowledge of how or when it got there but there are still a dozen or so I believe that are probably gone forever..

It’s therefore a real shame that the new PreRoll Post for Windows (and Macintosh) Imagine Products wasn’t around back then as this issue would not have transpired. READ MORE...

January 2016:

Bioneers 2015 FCPX Workflow Relies on ShotPut Pro

Mark Spencer show the workflow he used on the the 2015 National Bioneers Conference with some tips and tricks for long multicam shows. The conference master is made up from a variety of feeds, a switched master, three camera isos and a graphics source. This amounts to about a Terabyte of media a day that has to be recorded on site and then taken to a hotel room where it is copied onto local drives for editing. ShotPut Pro is essential to his workflow in cutting down what could be 8 hours of copy time down to just 45 minutes! WATCH THE VIDEO on FCP.co

January 26, 2016:

Checksums, Speed and Acceptable Risk

Do you hang out under a tree during a lightning storm? Do you perform a checksum every time you copy important files from one place to another? If you don't have an equally strong opinion about both these questions, it's time to learn about checksums: how they work, how much you can trust them, and how this technical task can save a creative person from certain doom.

Kylee Peña, a Workflow Supervisor for Bling Digital, Los Angeles, explores the intricacies of working with checksums. READ MORE...

December 17, 2015:

PreRoll Post™ for Windows Released

LTFS Archiving Application Makes LTO Tape Archiving Easier and More Efficient at an Unprecedented Price
Imagine Products, creator of software utilities for backing
up, viewing, sharing, transcoding, and archiving video assets, has released PreRoll Post™ for
Windows®. Used heavily in broadcast and postproduction, PreRoll Post now allows Windows
users to create nonproprietary backups of any file or folder using the open-source Linear Tape
File System (LTFS). The archiving application streamlines the process of placing any file types
onto an LTO-7, LTO-6, or LTO-5 tape, or onto Sony’s Optical Disc Archive (ODA), at a price that
is far more affordable than that of any comparable tool.

“Most people keep ‘archives’ on hard drives, which become less and less reliable the longer
they sit on the shelf. PreRoll Post mitigates that problem by ensuring you can back up full-
resolution media to local disk and to a long-term tape or cartridge in an easy and almost
foolproof way, so archives are made correctly the first time,” said Michelle Maddox, marketing
director at Imagine Products. “PreRoll Post for Windows is really a one-of-a-kind product for its
price point. Anything comparable for Windows would cost thousands of dollars, versus just a
few hundred dollars for PreRoll Post. Even better, it’s compatible with our ShotPut Pro
application for Windows, which has become the industry’s de facto standard for offloading.”

PreRoll Post relies on checksum technology to ensure the files on tape exactly match the
originals. By storing the checksum values for each file, PreRoll Post also verifies files during
restoration back to hard disk whenever they’re retrieved. This process provides confidence that
all copies of files match the originals.

Within the PreRoll Post application, the LTFS mounts a tape as a volume (like a hard disk)
within Explorer, making it possible to write to and read from the tape as if it were a disk, without
other proprietary software or formatting. PreRoll Post also makes it easy to search for and
retrieve previously backed-up files. Drag-and-drop functionality for both archiving and retrieval
allows users to drill down into folders on mounted or unmounted tapes/cartridges to locate the
files or folders they seek — eliminating the need to insert and search each tape individually until
the correct file or folder is found. Instead, once they determine which tape or cartridge holds the
file or folder they’re after, users can simply insert that tape or cartridge and pull what they need.

For content creators or post houses that create LTO deliverables for Discovery Channel,
PreRoll Post offers a Discovery Channel mode to ensure the LTO tapes meet the network’s
specifications for field, graphics, or program masters. In this mode, PreRoll Post automatically
places files in the proper locations on the tape to meet Discovery Channel specs.

PreRoll Post is hardware-independent, meaning that it is compatible with any LTFS-compliant
tape drive, including MagStor™, mTape™, UNITEX LT60 with USB 3.0, 1Beyond, or any
desktop-connected LTO drive, as well as Sony’s ODA. Simple installation instructions walk the
user through setup for the appropriate drive. Users can customize settings, such as naming
conventions and notifications via email/text, to ensure archiving consistency.

PreRoll Post for Windows is available for immediate download from www.imagineproducts.com.
The cost is $499.

About Imagine Products

Imagine Products Inc. develops innovative video workflow solutions that help film and media
professionals back up, view, share, transcode, and archive their digital-video assets. Powerful, affordable,
and easy to use, these specialized workflow applications have become invaluable tools for broadcasters,
postproduction facilities, and others whose businesses rely on digital video. In business for more than 25
years, Imagine Products is based in Indianapolis, USA. More information is available at
www.imagineproducts.com.

Imagine Products Celebrates 25 Years

Fighting Poverty with Education and Technology

This holiday season, Imagine Products is assisting Nehemiah Ministries in raising money to help provide the necessary tools to educate and improve the quality of life for many children in Haiti. NVM works to produce productive citizens who will help to move Haiti forward and break the cycle of poverty.

In celebration of our 25th anniversary, Imagine Products has donated $2,500.00 towards providing a computer lab, in addition to the nearly $800.00 in donations we received from our customers. Thank you all for helping support this worthwhile cause, to increase education in Haiti. WE can make a difference. READ MORE...

December 2, 2015:

Imagine Products to Present at District Digital Creatives meeting

DDC professional video User Group welcomes Dan Montgomery, President of Imagine Products as a guest speaker at their meeting on December 2nd held in conjunction with GvExpo. See why the judges say "A simple, non-proprietary solution. The beauty of PreRoll Post™ is its ease of use. With virtually no learning curve, PreRoll Post™ eliminates the pain and hassle associated with the un-glamorous but hugely necessary archiving process.​"

November 23, 2015:

Larry Jordan Product Review: Archive Media Using PreRoll Post™

I hate creating archives. There are better uses for my time. On the other hand, PreRoll Post makes the process of creating an archive fast and simple. Even better, once the system is set up backups and archives can be fully automated using Watch Folders.

The real test, however, of any archiving software is how quickly you can find and recover a file accurately. Here, PreRoll Post makes file retrieval easy, but its search engine is a little hard to use.

Eduardo Angel Discusses Creating the Habit of Backups

Cre­at­ing a new habit isn’t easy. We all know that. And I’m not talk­ing about major changes like exer­cis­ing more, eat­ing bet­ter, or work­ing less, but simple things like backing up our projects, espe­cially when work­ing on loca­tions. The “I’ll do it later” or “this is not a good time” will always be there so by incorporating sim­ple and efficient prac­tices into our stan­dard work­flows can make things much eas­ier and even­tu­ally save a project or even a client.

Shot­Put ­Pro, currently on its fifth version is an application known to many in the film indus­try. What I find inter­est­ing is that even some of those who know about the app and totally get its impor­tance skip the crit­i­cal backup step. This arti­cle cov­ers how we use Shot­Put­Pro on location. READ MORE...

October 13th, 2015:

Imagine Products to Present at Mopictive NYC October meeting

Mopictive, the New York City professional video User Group, welcomes Dan Montgomery, President of Imagine Products as a guest speaker at their meeting on Octover 13th. Join him for an overview of Imagine's new "Smart Player" -- HD-VU2™ that instantly views over 20 camera formats without transcoding. HD-VU2 is powerful enough to view 4K files including ARRI RAW,
CinemaDNG and all the RED formats, not to mention GoPro, Panasonic, Sony and countless others!

October 29th, 2015:

Imagine Products to Present at Calgary FCPUG October meeting

Calgary's Fabulously Creative Pro User Group, welcomes Michelle Maddox as a guest speaker at their meeting on October 29th. Join her for an overview of Imagine's new "Smart Player" -- HD-VU2™ that instantly views over 20 camera formats without transcoding. HD-VU2 is powerful enough to view 4K files including ARRI RAW,
CinemaDNG and all the RED formats, not to mention GoPro, Panasonic, Sony and countless others!

She'll also give an overview of Imagine's backup and archiving
applications ShoPutPro™ and PreRollPost™ with some LTO 'tips and tricks' as well as a look at where the industry is headed.

Are you still backing up to hard disks? Find out why this is NOT safe guarding your valuable assets.

Michelle Maddox is a graduate of the prestigious Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis. She joined Imagine Products at the beginning of 2014 as Marketing Director. Her marketing experience and graphic design background have been invaluable in driving Imagine Products success.

2 October 2015:

Macintosh OS X 10.11 'El Capitan' is Here!

Imagine Products, Inc. today confirmed their continued commitment to Apple® technology by announcing that all their Macintosh applications support El Capitan, the latest Mac OS X update. Imagine Products announcement comes just days after Apple released the newest OS X update.

"El Capitan builds on the groundbreaking features and beautiful design introduced in OS X Yosemite, refining the experience and improving performance in lots of little ways that make a big difference," according to Apple.

Imagine Products, Inc has been developing workflow applications for the media, broadcasting and entertainment industry for over 25 years. Their array of applications boast simple to use, elegant user interfaces with powerful backends that are affordable for both professionals and beginners. Mac OS has been a well-established platform of choice in the industry for decades and Imagine Product's has been a dedicated supporter since 1991.

"We've been developing Mac software for a long time. It's one of the most stable and the most widely used platform in the media and entertainment industry," said Dan Montgomery, the President of Imagine Products, Inc. "We appreciate and emulate Apple's constant technological advances for our industry and the world."

Imagine Product's popular LTFS archiving application, PreRoll Post™ is optimized for OS X 10.11. PreRoll Post takes advantage of the Linear Tape File System and can be paired with any LTO tape drive or Sony's Optical Disc Archive (ODA).

11-15 September 2015:

Imagine Products at IBC 2015

Lewis Holleran Wins the Apple Watch!

Thanks to all IBC 2015 visitors for participating in the Apple Watch drawing. It was a lot of fun and great to see so many smiles! Congratulations to Lewis Holleran. Enjoy the watch and let us know how you're getting along. We'll be shipping it to your shortly.

Win HD-VU2 'Smart Player' at the Supermeet!

August 12, 2015:

Announcing MagStor™ LTO-6 Tape Drive

Introducing the DIT's professional choice LTO drive, MagStor™ TRB-HL6. Now you can connect the LTO-6 tape drive to your Macintosh or Windows computer and loop-through to connect other Thunderbolt 2.0 devices, RAIDs, and other peripherals without loosing bandwidth.

MagStor's quiet, vibration free operation and practical form-factor make it ideal for on-the-set carts or tucked away in the edit suite or equipment room.

Use it with Imagine Products' PreRollPost application and be archiving in minutes. No extra converters, power supplies or drivers to install or configure. A simple, one-click installation and you're ready to go!

MagStor at a Glance

-2 front accessible I/O ports
-Compatible with LTO6 and LTO5 tapes
-Available for North American and International markets
-Practical form-factor for cart or desktop use
-Includes Apple® Thunderbolt cable
-Three-Year Warranty

PreRollPost Archiving Application Highlighted

Archiving-it's a word that can cause many emotions in filmmakers and DITs, most of them negative. Archiving is like eating your vegetables. We know we should do it but we'd rather eat pizza and cookies all day while we spend hours getting the perfect shot. But what happens once you get that perfect shot, stick it on a hard drive and then try to access it a few years later?Read more...

Live Demos coming to a User Group near you!

September 22nd, 2015:

Imagine Products to Present at SF Cutters September Meeting in San Francisco

SFCutters, the world's first Final Cut User Group, welcomes Lead Software Engineer Mark Hudgins as a guest speaker at their meeting on Tuesday, September 22nd. Join him for an overview of Imagine's new "Smart Player" -- HD-VU2™ that instantly views over 20 camera formats without transcoding. HD-VU2 is powerful enough to view 4K files including ARRI RAW,
CinemaDNG and all the RED formats, not to mention GoPro, Panasonic, Sony and countless others!

Mark Hudgins is the Lead Software Engineer on HD-VU2 and many other
applications from Imagine Products. He has been with the company for over 7 years.
Over that time he has become extremely knowledgeable regarding the post
–production world and the workflows within. Mark Hudgins has a masters degree in
computer science from Purdue University.

June 24, 2015:

May 26, 2015:

May 27, 2015:

May 27, 2015:

April 15, 2015:

PreRoll Post™ Wins Prime Award at NAB2015!

The judges said "A simple, non-proprietary solution. The beauty of PreRoll Post™ is its ease of use. With virtually no learning curve, PreRoll Post™ eliminates the pain and hassle associated with the un-glamorous but hugely necessary archiving process.​"

April 13-16 2015:

Imagine Products at NAB 2015

Thanks for a great National Association of Broadcasters show!
Here are a few of the treasured memories:

Dan Montgomery, Ian Robinson, Joost Van Der Hoven, Paul Siegel and Randy Riggins shared a few laughs at 18th Annual Media Motion Ball. (BTW, Carey Dissmore reminded us that Imagine Products was one of the sponsors for the very first one back in 1998!)

NEW From Imagine: HD-VU2 Will Play Any Media File Without Transcoding.Chuck Joiner interviews Sr. Software Engineer Mark Hudgins on the NAB show floor.

"HD-VU2 is, simply put, a media player. What makes it so powerful and so essential is that it can play pretty much any media file you throw at it. From the simple .AVI and .MOV files we all know to the more specialized formats that the new, high end cameras produce, HD-VU 2 can play them all smoothly and natively, with no transcoding necessary. That includes Blackmagic ProRes & DNG, Canon AVCHD, EOS & XF, GoPro Hero, Panasonic P2 & AVCCAM, JVC ProHD, SxS, RED Epic Dragon, One & Scarlet, Sony NXCam, XAVC(*), XDCam & AVCHD, Arri Alexa & Amira, AJA Cion and more."

March 27, 2015:

Cost Effective Archives with mTape™ and PreRoll Post™

Rick Young reviews mTape and PreRollPost on his Movie Machine website. "mTape by mLogic is an LTO6 archive solution for long-term backup of files. Using affordable tape, this offers protection which you don't get from spinning drives. With no platters, bearings, or the electronics found in a hard drive, LTO6 tape is seen as being a safe, reliable and an affordable way of archiving terabytes of information." ...Read More

March 24, 2015:

Imagine Products, Inc. Releases ShotPut Pro™ with XXHash

Imagine Products, Inc.™ has released version 5.3 of it's popular offloading application, ShotPut Pro for Macintosh. XXHash is an extremely fast non-cryptographic 64-bit algorithm, working at speeds close to RAM limits.

Users with fast systems such as SSDs or those copying large quantities of files (like RAW, DPX or DNG files) will likely see the most speed improvement.

This new update also sports a new logo which is part of Imagine's overall re-branding efforts. The update is free to existing Version 5.x owners; or just $29 to prior version owners. Click 'Check for Updates' within the application to get it.

March 3, 2015:

Imagine Products, Inc. Releases New Native File Viewer HD-VU2™

Imagine Products, Inc.™ has released version 2 of their all in one
player, HD-VU™ which views media in its original form without the need for QuickTime
codecs, transcoding or modifying the files. HD-VU can play difficult formats like
Panasonic P2 and Sony XAVC as well as frame based video sequences such as ARRI
RAW, Blackmagic DNG and DPX. Over 20 different camera formats are supported, just
drop them into HD-VU2 and view instantly.

HD-VU provides the user many different organizing options for the files. Sort files by
type and metadata or in user created Playlists or folders. Choose from “all”,
“unwatched” or “group by” for easy reference. Watch Folders can also be set up so
when a video becomes available HD-VU will automatically link to them.
HD-VU also has the ability to sync external audio files. Drag and drop the audio files
from Finder and HD-VU synchronizes the audio/video playback. Audio channels can
also be turned ON/OFF with settings and preferences for separate tracks.

HD-VU offers temporary color correction for truer playback. HD-VU does not
permanently modify files; applying the LUT is simply for viewing purposes. LUTs are
selected on a clip-by-clip level in the ‘Get Info’ panel of each, or may be applied to an
entire Playlist or Folder of videos.

All clips are played in a separate, full screen scalable window with multiple timecode
options and rates. These options and rates are easily changed from the viewer window
and metadata for all files are available. You can even grab Snap Shots from the video at
any frame in PNG format.

HD-VU was designed to work in conjunction with Imagine Product’s offloading
application ShotPut Pro™ and compression application ProxyMill™. Clips made with
either application can be viewed instantly with HD-VU.

“We’ve been working on HD-VU2 for quite awhile now, perfecting and increasing the
formats that it can view,” says Dan Montgomery, President of Imagine Products. “Our
customers were looking for a viewer that simplified and maximized their time on set.
HD-VU is the answer. We expect that this will quickly become a necessary tool to have,
just like ShotPut Pro.”

February 18, 2015:

Digital Imaging Technician: A Very Practical Guide to On-Set Management of Digital Media

“Robert Trim’s Digital Imaging Technician does what is says on the tin. It’s an excellent practical primer on all aspects of the role of a working DIT and Robert covers everything from on-set etiquette to understanding the fundamentals of colour science to step by step guides to achieving common DIT tasks in specific software.” Jonny Elwyn, Film Editor

Imagine Products, Inc.™ and Sony [SNE] have partnered to bring a new archiving
solution to Macintosh users. Imagine Products has created a LTFS archiving application, PreRoll Post, to be
used in conjunction with Sony’s Optical Disc Archive (ODA). This single user archiving solution uses USB
3.0 and checksum technology to deliver top-quality archiving results.

PreRoll Post is an LTFS archiving application that creates thumbs, proxies and rich metadata while backing
up files and folders to multiple locations at once. It also uses checksum technology to ensure that the files
and folders are copied 100% accurately. Drag and drop files and folders into the queue for copying to the
disc.

The Optical Disc Archive from Sony utilizes blu-ray discs to store large volumes of files safely and securely.
The USB 3.0 drive plugs directly into compatible Macintosh computers and is ideal for long-term file
protection and management. File and folders are stored on a 12-disc cartridge for more than 18TB of
uncompressed data with fast random file access.

“PreRoll Post™ builds upon Imagine’s expertise in easy to install and use media management software
geared toward the media industry,” said Dan Montgomery, President of Imagine Products. “The ODA from
Sony is really an incredible piece of hardware, it provides the user the ability to use the 12-disc cartridge
function as a single unified volume. You combine that with PreRoll Post and you’re looking at a secure,
reliable LTFS archiving solution.”

ShotPut Pro™ Achievement in Post Production

Imagine Products Presents at San Francisco Cutters

SFCutters, the world's first Final Cut User Group, welcomes Michelle Boone as a guest speaker at their meeting on October 23rd. Join her for an overview of Imagine's backup and archiving
applications ShoPutPro™ and PreRollPost™. She'll give some LTO 'tips and tricks' as well as a look at where the industry is headed.

Are you still backing up to hard disks? Find out why this is NOT safe guarding your valuable assets.

Michelle Boone is a graduate of the prestigious Kelley School of Business in Indianapolis. She joined Imagine Products at the beginning of 2014 as the Marketing Coordinator. Her marketing experience and graphic design background have been invaluable in driving Imagine Products success this year.

All of our other Macintosh applications are Yosemite compatible as well. Just be sure you have the latest version of ProxyMill, PreRollPost, ShotSum, LUTSync or HDVU if you're upgrading to OSX 10.10.

ShotPut Pro v5.2 is a FREE UPGRADE for existing v5.x users. Just click 'Check for Updates' within the application, or select MY PRODUCTS tab top center of our website to download.

Oct 16, 2014:

Digital Production BUZZ PodCast with Dan Montgomery

Larry Jordan and Michael Horton chat with Dan Montgomery this week about the practicality and forecast for LTO archives in the Media & Entertainment industry. Click here for the PodCast.

Oct 14, 2014:

See the new mTape™ Thunderbolt LTO-6 Drive in action!

Filming with Blackmagic Cameras and other cameras that record in RAW, ProRes, DnXHD and other codecs? How are you archiving your footage? Here’s how to do it easily!

Dan Montgomery from Imagine Products presented at the October 14th BOSCPUG meeting, an introduction to LTO archiving and their LTFS based Mac application, PreRollPost™. He demonstrated mTape™, the only certified Thunderbolt LTO-6 drive, and gave tips and best practices when setting up an open standard archive for small to medium sized organizations.

Imagine Products is well known for it’s industry defacto standard offloading application, ShotPut Pro™ and have over 23 years experience with video workflow applications for cataloging, archiving and sharing.

IBC 2014: PreRoll Post with LTO Tape Archive Solutions

Archiving is one of those things it’s easy to ignore in favour of storing ever-increasing numbers of hard drives full of old media.

Some Hard drives can have a shelf life of as little as five years; by comparison, LTO tape can be stored safely for up to 35 years. Running costs are lower too with a 2.5TB cartridge costing around $40, cheaper than an equivalent hard disk.

Imagine Products’ software PreRoll Post aims to simplify the backup process and is available in a bundle with an LTO6 machine for around $4000 US. This isn’t exactly cheap but if you are serious about protecting your valuable material right now then a LTO solution is certainly worth investigating. Read more...

Sep 18, 2014:

Phil Keoghan uses ShotPut Pro™ with Sony F55 on Le Ride

What a great piece of software. I am working on an independent film called Le Ride and our media manager used your software to ensure we captured our footage was captured properly each day.

Larry Jordan Reviews PreRollPost™

PreRoll Post is a capable backup and archiving system for LTO-5 or LTO-6 devices, with a strong focus on media backup. Running exclusively on Macintosh systems, when all components of the software are purchased, it can backup any data file, create thumbnails and proxies of supported media files, review proxy files stored on tape, track files stored on multiple tapes and simplify the process of recovering a file from tape in the event the file is damaged or erased from a hard disk. Read more...

NewsShooter Matt Allard Reviews ShotPut Pro for Mac

Backing up the material you shoot is a pretty tedious chore. Often I have to do this late at night after a day’s shooting. This is when I’m the most likely to make mistakes due to tiredness. Sometimes I’m dealing with multiple formats and cards from different cameras and it is very easy to forget to copy a card, duplicate the same card twice by mistake, or not copy the proper file structure. Just one small mistake backing up and I would lose valuable work. Read More...

July 19, 2014:

Media Management: BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP

by Paul Atkinson, freelance data wrangler, London

The importance of media management is paramount to every production. I am currently working as a camera assistant/data wrangler on a new series called The Classic Car Show. This involves dealing with multiple cameras and formats 3-4 days per week, with approximately 300GB of footage per shoot day. On a job using Sony F5's, F55's, Panasonic GH4's, RED Epic/Scarlett, GoPro's, 5D MKIII's and many others. It is key to have a solid workflow in place to deal with the data on a day to day basis. Read More...

NAB 2014

New! ShotSum™ File Comparison Utility for Macintosh Released

ShotSum™ for Macintosh is a file-analysis utility used to compare files and folders to one another. At its heart, it is designed to determine whether two files have the same contents.

ShotSum™ provides an easy way to check file integrity across all your copies for sameness (same contents, different names) or differences (same name, different contents). Just drop two or more files or folders onto the application and click Begin!

Checksum technology is used to determine a file's byte-count and byte sequence so you can be assured that matched files are exactly the same, regardless how they're named. Choose from several popular checksum algorithms (MD5, SHA256, SHA512, CRC32) to create text files that allow you to assure the file is unchanged anytime in the future.

After each completed comparison you may generate a log detailing the activity and results. Personal notes may also be added to the logs for future recall of the purpose and circumstances of the comparison. Create logs in plain Text, CSV, HTML and XML formats.

Download a demo today!

PreRollPost For Discovery Channel Delivery

By the way, PreRoll Post application is insanely awesome!

We work directly with the Discovery Network & that application has made our LTO deliverables smooth & painless.

Thanks very much.

Randy
Screaming Flea Productions

MEDIA MANAGEMENT, A BREEZE WITH THE RIGHT TOOLS

When it comes to media management, we use ShotPut Pro, a $99 steal-of-a-deal that's both Mac & PC compatible and worth every penny. ShotPut Pro allows you to copy recorded media to multiple drives simultaneously and then verifies the transfers. Once successfully verified, an offload log is created. Read more...

Ultimate Survival Alaska (Nat. Geo.) and 72 Hours (TNT)

with ShotPut Pro

Aloha,

I have been doing a lot of data wrangling for commercials, shorts and
network reality tv shows in the last two years, including Ultimate Survival
Alaska (Nat. Geo. Channel) and 72 Hours (TNT) and I absolutely love ShotPut
Pro!

I am working on a show right now that has 9 F55s, 1 RED EPIC, 20
surveillance cameras, 9 GoPros, 4 EX3s and 2 Canon 5Ds shooting every day
all day and we wouldn't be pulling it off without ShotPut Pro.

As a 'power user' having a tool like ShotPut Pro has become a necessity more than a luxury. I am currently being asked to turn around 3.5 - 5 TB of data per day and having ShotPut Pro's ability to duplicate the file transfer simultaneously saves us a TON of time! I attempted to use Adobe Prelude on this one thinking it would be more useful, but it wasn't able to keep up with ShotPut Pro and it was leaving a lot of the secondary files out of my folders instead of duplicating them exactly, (a big problem in the Media Management world.)

Keep up the great work! It is appreciated!

Mahalo,
Randy Mills

4K Workflow with ShotPut Pro

I’m teaching classes this month at Maine Media Workshops and I want to demonstrate the XDCAM workflow using Shot Put Pro to my students.

The shoot I was working on in France this summer was a 4K documentary with Phil Keoghan (host of Amazing Race) for theatrical release next year. Basically Phil and a riding partner retraced all 3500 miles of the 1928 Tour de France (50% longer than the modern race) on vintage bikes to raise money for MS Society. They kept pretty much to the same route and riding schedule, which meant we were moving an average of 150 miles per day. Although I am normally a cameraman, I was hired as the DIT, data wrangler, and editor for a daily highlights video for CBS. In five weeks I was in 25 different hotels and had to set up an edit bay and data-wrangling work station every night, plus edit a 5-minute daily highlights video for CBS .

We had two F55’s shooting 4K plus XDCAM proxies and I had to deal with as many as eight 128GB SxS cards each night, plus edit.

I COULD NOT HAVE KEPT UP THE PACE WITHOUT SHOTPUT PRO.

Sony may have me write an article about my experiences for PR purposes, and I’ll be sure to mention you guys.

Thanks,
Doug Jensen

PreRollPost Blows Them Away

PreRollPost. What can I say. It’s frickin awesome. As senior engineer here at Crow I have spent the last several years jumping through hoops to try and get a satisfactory archiving software. I’ve tried so many packages and all of them – bar none, have been varying degrees of awful.

I came across PRP by accident (while looking for support for our Shotput issue actually) – and had not heard of it. I’m just so relived I did. It will replace a £10000 Xendata archive system that has been a complete nightmare to work with. Im getting 140MB/s and 1.44TB on an LTFS tape. Figures I could only dream of achieving with our previous systems. It’s such a relief to use such a well thought out piece of archive software, that performs better than expectations. And the price? Honestly – it’s too cheap!

As soon as they were available I downloaded the LTFS binaries and MacFuse, and installed them to assess the LTFS viability on our at the time new LTO5 tape library. Whilst it worked, I thought a software developer would jump on the available SDK resources and get a create a decent GUI, so it could be used more easily and confidently. That was over 2 years ago, and I’d given up hope on a mac platform ever being made available that used it. Well you did it, and it’s a wonderful thing!

If you need any product endorsement – my colleagues and I are completely blown away!

Thanks Again

Mark Delbridge
Crow TV

October 1st, 2013:

LUT Sync™ Color Correction for Macintosh Released

LUT Sync™ is a color-correction utility that allows you to import color lookup tables (LUT) and apply them to any QuickTime-compliant video file or group of files.

LUT files may be 1D or 3D type and imported from any source or creation tool. Works with ARRI, Canon, RED and others--all popular and custom LUTs (e.g. C-Log, Alexa LogC, CineLook, S-Curve, REC 709, etc.)

When setting up LUT Sync™ you can preview how a Color Look Up Table file type will affect the source footage by stepping through a few sample frames.

Setup any number of Presets and switch between them. Easily select one or more output locations, choose the processing codec (H.264 for fastest results, or ProRes 422 or 4444 for full resolution files), and the LUT(s) you wish to apply. When complete, files are organized in the output folder by folders for the Codec Type, Preset name, and LUT file applied.

Download a demo today!

SECS 2013

Congratulations to our winners from the SouthEast Creative Summit in Atlanta!

Bayou City Productions

"If you've used BRU, PreRollPost has basically the same functionality from an interface perspective. You drag the contents you want to archive into the Backup window, name the archive, and hit enter.To restore, you navigate through the Mac Finder-like GUI and drag the contents you want to retrieve into the Retrieve window, choose a target location, and hit enter. No learning curve, really simple. The program optimizes the order of the files to provide the fastest transfer, and in my experience there have been no slow downs at all. It's just as fast as BRU. When the files are copied, everything is verified using MD5 checksum. A database is stored of all your archives in MySQL Lite format, another open standard. "

"If you're interested in a low cost LTFS archiving option for Mac, I encourage you to try it out. The demo download allows you ten separate backup sessions, plenty of time to see if it will work for you. If you buy the software and down the road decide to do something else or they stop developing PreRollPost, all of your archives are in an open industry standard format everyone supports, no worries!"

DMVCPUG 2013

Dan Montgomery - Presenter at DMVCPUG 2013, showing the power and simplicity of Imagine's new version of ProxyMill for Mac, an automated transcoding application to streamline your workflow,
and demonstrating LUT Sync, a new color correction application.

PreRollPost™ Version 2 Released
Now with LTO-6 Support!

Now you can use PreRollPost with either LTO-5 or LTO-6 Ultrium tapes and decks. The new Version 2 PreRollPost application is fast, rock solid, and Mt Lion compatible. Copy to tape and hard disk at the same time, while making visually enhanced indices with the help of ProxyMill.

PreRollPost™ presented at LACPUG on February 27th, 2013.

The Creative Pro User Group in Los Angeles had Dan Montgomery as a special
guest at their meeting on February 27th. Dan presented Imagine Product's newest archive product,
PreRollPost™, and a sneak peek at other products coming in time for NAB 2013! Click here to visit the LACPUG website.

November 16th, 2012:

Abbey Road Studios Opts for ShotPut Pro for Offloads

Notes from the Offline blogs about their video editing experiences at Abbey Road Studios in session with Volkswagen Beetle and Paul Weller. Great information about why they chose ShotPut Pro over Adobe Prelude to offload.

Atlanta's Post Production User Group welcomes Dan Montgomery back to show off Imagine Product's newest LTO-5 Mac application,
PreRollPost™. Click here to visit the ATL-CUTTERS website.

August 31st, 2012:

'Data Wrangling 101' presented at the Chicago CPUG meeting on October 24th, 2012.

Chicago's Creative Pro User Group welcomed Dan Montgomery as a guest instructor at their meeting on October 24th. He taught Media Management/Data Wrangling and touched on industry standards such as ShoPutPro™ and Imagine Product's newest LTO Mac application,
PreRollPost™. Click here to visit the Chicago Creative Pro website.

August 31st, 2012:

'Data Wrangling 101' presented at the San Francisco Cutters meeting on October 25th, 2012.

SFCutters, the world's first Final Cut User Group, welcomed Dan Montgomery as a guest instructor at their meeting on October 25th. He taught Media Management/Data Wrangling and touched on industry standards such as ShoPutPro™ and Imagine Product's newest LTO Mac application,
PreRollPost™. Click here to visit the SFCutter's website.

Amelia Earhart's Lost Plane, Electra

Sonar image may have unveiled Amelia Earhart's lost plane the electra. Click here for the Discovery News Coverage.
Click here to visit the TIGHAR website for the Niku VII analysis.

July 9th, 2012:

Imagine Assists in the Search for Amelia Earhart

The International Group for Historic Aircraft Recovery set sail July 2, 2012 for the South Pacific island Nikumaroro with sophisticated technology to search the deep water around the island for the Lockheed Electra's wreckage. Once again, several of Imagine's applications are going along to assist in the video organization and cataloging.
Click here to visit the TIGHAR website for daily updates on the voyage and search.

July 5th, 2012:

'Data Wrangling 101' presented at the Atlanta Cutters meeting by Dan Montgomery
on August 22nd, 2012.

Atlanta's Post Production User Group welcomed Dan as a guest instructor at their meeting on August 22nd. He taught Media Management/Data Wrangling and touched on industry standards such as ShoPutPro™ and Imagine Product's newest LTO Mac application,
PreRollPost™. Click here to visit the ATL-CUTTERS website.

May 31st, 2012:

ShotPut Pro for Mac will be traveling to Afghanistan with David Bowering In June 2012.

David Bowering will traveling to Afghanistan for his documentary, Medevac Through My Lens,
in June of 2012. Below is an excerpt from the tech blog on his website,
Medevac Through My Lens about ShotPut Pro for Mac™.

"For offloading software I will be using the excellent Imagine Products ShotPut Pro. This is the industry de facto standard for automated offloading software. This makes my job of data wrangling so much easier, ..."